Recently our youngest son Michael gave us a brand new piece of news that he had just received. He told us that the last companion/District Leader that knew him had come home from his mission. I told him that the “Legend of Elder Hardy†would now begin to slowly disappear from the corporate consciousness of the Raleigh North Carolina Mission.
The same thing happened to me when I was a missionary in Taiwan. First, you come to be known as you were in the mission field longer, and then soon you were creating your own legend through the things that you had done while a missionary in your areas. Soon, you went home and as your juniors came on home, the legend of you was first enhanced, then disappeared as there was no one to hear the stories.
Bonnie and I went back to Taiwan four years later. We inevitably ran into Elders and Sisters out doing missionary work and the question would come up as to what we were doing there. We would explain that I had been a missionary, and then a cloud would come over there face, and then a sense of amazement and wonder as they would first think of the fact that you had “been here so long ago (actually on 4 years) and they would have never have heard of you.
I had a different experience as an Elder because I had been a Branch President and Concern Coordinator and had seen lots of old Elders names on membership records. That practice was long dead in the mission (having been able to get local leadership) and thus they had no idea of who I was. The legend of that Elder Hardy was dead.
I told Michael that the same thing was now going to happen to him. When Michael went back to North Carolina earlier this year, his legend was starting to die as Elders didn’t know who he was, but now the death of his legend will begin in earnest. It is an interesting experience to become a legend and then see it die. The Legend of Elder Hardy will die.